There are many kinds of scientific evidence for the existence
of God. One of the most diverse kinds of evidence is the evidence
that comes from design which is seen in numerous areas of
scientific endeavor. It is the contention of this journal that
chance is an invalid mechanism to explain the complexities seen
in the creation, and throughout the thirty years that we have
been involved in this work we have given literally hundreds of
examples. Readers not familiar with the examples we have given
may wish to secure our two volumes of what we call Dandy Designs.
This can be done by purchasing one book for $3.00 or both books
for $5.00 (ppd), or you can borrow them by returning them to us
for a full refund

It is important to understand that when a person looks at
evidence of design in the creation, there are three forms that
the evidence falls into--or three kinds of arguments that are
being made. In this article we would like to review these three
forms of design.

Intuitive Design

Intuitive design is a form of design that simply asks if what
we are examining can realistically be explained on a chance
basis. For most of us observing the birth of a new baby will
convince us that chance is a difficult explanation to accept.
Looking at that perfect new human form which has been produced in
less than 10 months is incredible. When we study the migratory
processes of monarch butterflies, Arctic terns, or countless
other creatures that travel incredible distances using a variety
of navigational tools we see complexity that defies a chance
explanation. The operation of the human body is a process that is
so complex that mankind is still left with massive numbers of
mysteries that are unsolved. The human brain is a computer-like
device that we still have microscopic knowledge of, and human
behavior and its connection to the brain and to our genetic
makeup is an area of study that changes daily.

Evolutionists have attempted to formulate models to suggest
how some of these things could in fact develop by chance. Their
models are clever and can sound convincing, especially when
couched in language that makes it sound as though the model was
observed happening instead of being proposed as a possibility.
When you realize that there are a large number of events that
would have had to have taken place at the same time and in the
same place, the probability of that actually happening becomes
significantly lower. That realization has led to the anthropic
arguments discussed later in the article.

Creative Design

Nature is full of beauty. Many times this incredible beauty
has no survival value or strength value at all, and in fact may
be a liability to the individual. An example of this is the
Fibonacci spiral seen over and over in the creation. This spiral
has a very specific shape and is controlled by a mathematical
precision that has prompted literally hundreds of scientific and
mathematical papers over the years. There is even a Fibonacci
Quarterly and a society that explores and promotes the
applications of the Fibonacci sequence and its applications. The
Fibonacci spiral is seen in a bewildering number of applications
in nature. Examples include the curving arms of galaxies, the
curl of a water wave, the curve of water going down the drain,
the curl of the teeth of everything from a groundhog to a grizzly
bear, the curl of the beaks of most birds, the curl of a spider
web, a finger print, the tubers of hundreds of plant species, the
curl of the flowers of a sunflower or magnolia, the curl of the
cochlea of the inner ear, the proboscis of many insects, and the
curve of subatomic particles.

As you read through this very abbreviated list, there are
several things that should jump out at you. First of all the
Fibonacci spiral is not confined to one area of the physical
world. It is seen in physics, chemistry, ornithology, entomology,
anatomy, and so forth. Most of these things do not offer a
survival value or strength. The shape of the curves of your
finger print or the way water goes down the drain is not a matter
of strength, and even if it were there is no special advantage
strength-wise to the spiral. The fact that this common shape
appears across diverse members of the plant and animal kingdom
makes it difficult to propose an evolutionary advantage or to
offer something that natural selection can operate on.

Every person reading this article has an area of creativity
that you have expertise in. Some of you can look at a painting
and know instantly who the artist was that created it. Some of
you can listen to two bars of a musical piece and know instantly
who the performer is or perhaps who composed the piece. Some of
you can look at a piece of architecture and recognize who the
architect was, who created it, or you may recognize a particular
make or style of furniture, or house construction. We all know in
some area or another what the intelligence was that designed and
produced the thing we like.

Creative design in the natural world is almost identical. A
creative mind created the beautiful, graceful sweeping lines of
the Fibonacci spiral. The beautiful color that occurs in animals
who are color blind themselves speaks of an aesthetic
appreciation of the color that is shown. The incredible artistic
forms seen everywhere in the creation that offer no special
strength or camouflage speak of a creative architectural force.
One can not say "Nature prefers beauty," one can only,
"God prefers beauty."

Mathematical Design --
The Anthropic Principle

When we discussed intuitive design we pointed out that in the
natural world there are large numbers of variables which all have
to be "right" for a given event or entity to exist. In
order for a planet to exist which can support any kind of life, a
wide range of physical conditions have to exist. These conditions
come from a wide range of unrelated causes--to have the right
temperatures, one must be in the right kind of star system, the
right distance from that star, be rotating at a certain rate,
have the right gaseous combination, and be free of large energy
heat sources or sinks. To have the right chemical basis for life
one must be in the right type of galaxy, be in the right place in
the galaxy, be in the right type of star group, have the right
type and size of planet, and be free of a variety of damaging
environmental variables. To have the right type of atmosphere a
similar set of conditions exist. In fact every parameter
essential to life has a large number of controlling agents to
cause it, sustain it, and protect it. In the past fifty years
science has vastly expanded its understandings of how many
variables there are, and how vital each of those variables is.
Even the physical variables that allow atoms and molecules to
exist have been discovered to be far more in number and in effect
than was previously thought.

The huge number of variables that have been discovered to
exist pose a major problem for those who wish to believe that
chance is the cause of all we see. The problem lies in the nature
of probability. When you flip a coin, the odds of getting a
"heads" is one in two or 50/50. If you flip a coin
twice and want to get a "heads" each time, the
probability is 1/2 x 1/2, or 1/4. That means if you flipped the
coins twice, four times in a row, you would get back-to-back
heads only once. If you wanted to get "heads" three
times in a row, it would be 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 or one chance out of
eight tries. The total probability is calculated by multiplying
the individual probabilities that make up the total. To get a
"heads" ten times in a row, the odds would be one in
1,024.

When we start considering highly complex things like life,
atomic structure, chemical processes, or galactic events, the
individual odds are not nice and simple like one out of two. Not
only are the numbers not as simple, but there are far more
variables involved. When scientists do these kinds of
calculations they end up with probabilities that are so
astronomical that chance becomes a clearly untenable explanation.
Numbers like 1 in 10160 are common (that would be one chance out
of 1 with 160 zeros after it). This kind of a number exceeds the
number of possible stars in the cosmos, or even the number of
possible baryons (building blocks of an atom). One cannot argue
that given a certain amount of time, the event has to occur; but
the event is unlikely to occur in any amount of possible time. On
top of that, the event is only one step in a long line of steps
to get to a desired final objective.

Chance is an invalid mechanism to explain the complexities
seen in all parts of the cosmos. If there is an intelligence who
used purpose and design to accomplish the creation then the odds
no longer are relevant. A tornado will not go through an aircraft
assembly factory and produce a 747, but human intelligence and
creativity will.

Not only do the three forms of design in the cosmos
demonstrate to us that we are the product of design, purpose, and
intelligence, but the same design defines the properties of God.
Power, intelligence, creativity, consistency, adaptability, and
an incredible love and concern for man are all displayed. The
lessons we can learn by studying God's design and planning are
many and can draw us to our creator and His design for our own
lives .